Round 2
by bhut
Summary: Post S2 (spoilers). Grant Ward and Bobbi Morse are not done with each other, not by a long shot...


**Round 2**

 _Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Marvel™._

Secret (Hydra)

For the first time in many months, Grant Ward felt as if his skin was too tight for him, as if there was a fire in his veins, and he really, really wanted to kill something. Or someone, anyone really, just to get out of here. 'Here' being the old hideout/Hydra base of the late Dr. Whitehall; ever since the old man was shot by Coulson back in the islands, and his allies scurried like rats to other Heads of Hydra, this place remained abandoned, partially derelict – not even Coulson was eager, apparently, to send a S.H.I.E.L.D. team here, to this place – or perhaps the rumors of S.H.I.E.L.D. having its own internal problems weren't rumors even back then, so who knows, who cares?

 _Kara Lynn..._

Grant Ward had been living a lie for most of his life, or perhaps they were different lies, just similar to each other – who cares? He always assumed that he was a man, a competent and dangerous man, who could take on any obstacle in his path, even the one called S.H.I.E.L.D. Two women – one Kara Lynn Palamas, a fellow ex-agent like him, the other – Bobbi Morse, currently still an agent – proved him wrong. He was a coward, a monster, and this – this miserable dark hole – was all that he deserved. And fuck S.H.I.E.L.D. and fuck Skye!

 _Kara Lynn..._

Kara Lynn had loved him, and he had been saving himself for Skye, who did not want him, did not need him, and had actually shot him. How pathetic. In all of those years, ever since the well, he had not changed one bit – he just grown older. Pathetic. Coulson was right to reject him. But fuck S.H.I.E.L.D. and fuck Skye! He was done with them. Maybe he had nothing left, maybe he had no one worthwhile left in his corner, but he would not go quietly into the night, he could not!

The fire sang in Grant Ward's blood, a voice was telling him to kill someone, preferably Hydra. Another is telling him to go for S.H.I.E.L.D. Grant himself, honestly, does not care for either. He just wants to change, to become the man that Kara Lynn wanted him to be, thought that he was. And Coulson? Fuck Coulson and S.H.I.E.L.D. and Skye!

" _I am the wielder of the flame of Anor! Your fire won't avail you, flame of Udun!"_ Grant half-remembers a quote from "Lord of the Rings", back when he was on the Bus for the first time, back when he began to half-believe that he could have a totally ordinary life...for a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, but still. It is funny, really, how ordinary a life of an S.H.I.E.L.D. agent can look like, if you are a double agent for both them and Hydra instead. Ha-ha.

There is fire in Grant Ward's blood, fire of frustration in his soul, and Grant loses it, smashing into one of the walls.

Only it proves to be a fake wall, hiding instead several long shelves of containers with flash sticks, memory cards and the like, so Grant Ward literally smashes it into fragments. That is... actually unexpected.

"Looks like the Devil – or rather Ravana, the great Maharajah, the first and the last, is still looking out for me," Grant plays with his fingers, even as he examines the contents of his new discoveries. "Bakshi, you rat, you lived like one and died one like one. Why did you have to take Kara Lynn with you? Why did _I_ have to send Kara Lynn after you? Why did agent Morse-"

Grant trails away. One of the collections in a container says exactly that: agent Morse. It is a small collection, started not too long before Whitehall died and Bakshi was captured...by Grant, who handed him over to S.H.I.E.L.D. (not that it amounted to anything, **cough** ), but it is not _that_ small.

Grant Ward cannot help it. He is interested in Bobbi Morse. Not as a woman, but as a somebody else – a fellow monster, perhaps? Doesn't matter, he takes out on the memory sticks and opens it on a computer. There is a video file; he watches it. Then he watches it again. Then he turns on the sound and listens to it as well. "Well, son of a bitch and Morse is the bitch here!" he proclaims finally. "This is..." what?

Blackmail material, says one voice, the one rooting for Hydra. The great Mockingbird, agent 19! We could make her dance, crawl through the mud, appease us! This is blackmail gold!

Grant ignores it. He may be dense, but Kara Lynn's death showed him that two wrongs do not make a right, and should he go into blackmail, the number of wrongs would be three. Kara Lynn would not want it, and to be honest, Grant himself does not want it. Bobbi had faced off with him honestly, directly and to the face, when he had the advantage – it is only fair, now that the advantage is on her side, to return the favor in the same style – well, _almost_ in the same style...

Secret (S.H.I.E.L.D.)

The day for Philip Coulson, _acting_ director of S.H.I.E.L.D. (at least until both Hill and Fury come to some sort of an agreement with each other and eject him, because only one arm? Well... S.H.I.E.L.D. is not elitist, but a certain level of physical condition _has_ to be met, and one cannot do this with just one arm), dawns hot and clear, as it often does, in the American Southwest.

Philip Coulson cannot exactly describe himself as happy, but he is not exactly unhappy either – in fact, it is often hard to gauge his moods, as they tend to change quickly, but that is not the point. The point is that Bobbi Morse, agent 19 and Mockingbird, is leaving the force.

Unlike Hydra, S.H.I.E.L.D. is voluntary – you can join and you can leave, albeit with certain conditions, but the truth is that the playing field is somewhat skewed: S.H.I.E.L.D. generally recruits only those people who tend to be already inclined to agree with S.H.I.E.L.D. and its values; and even then, (as it was a case with Skye), it often takes quite a bit of time before S.H.I.E.L.D. decides to let the newcomer join – or not. With Skye, Coulson took a gamble – and won. With Ward...it was something else.

S.H.I.E.L.D. always takes great pain to distinguish friend from foe. When it messes up, it messes up big time, as it had with Grant Ward, and John Garrett. Still, for all of his posturing, Garrett had been just a douche bag, a self-serving egotist that are a penny a dozen in Hydra; Ward appeared to be different at first – he actually appeared to realize at first what being part of a team means, what good thing it is – and then he rejected it, almost killing Fitz and Simmons in the process.

...Or perhaps, Coulson feels lately, Ward never appeared to have realized it at all, but just played along, half-running on instinct, half on something else. Ward might be a formidable fighter, but he was never the smartest man in S.H.I.E.L.D.; maybe Coulson had actually overestimated him, when he took him onto the team (if he had not, then he would have hurt less people), but it does not matter – once more, it had been FitzSimmons who paid the price.

...Doesn't matter. Ward appears to have gone to the ground once more, and Palomas, like so many other people, who put her trust into the ex-agent, is dead, save that this time Ward had actually paid for her funeral... pity about her, but also – what a waste of life. But that's, actually, what Ward himself is – a waste of resources that had already cost S.H.I.E.L.D. plenty, including Bobbi Morse, who is leaving S.H.I.E.L.D – considering that the organization is still stretched for human resources; that the separatists are still going strong; that Fitz is desolate about losing Jemma once more (and this is Coulson's fault too, for he shouldn't have left the two scientists alone with the 0-8-4 in the first place) and perhaps for good this time; and that May seems to have grown distant from them all once more after the Inhuman situation, the loss of Bobbi Morse is going to be felt, quite a bit, for she is a capable, competent and brave agent-

"Coulson? Sir? Coulson? Is the audio on? This is my first try and I am not sure if I got it right."

Coulson turns around. Sure enough, Ward is on the other end, sitting in some sort of a desolate, decrepit studio. "How did you even get this number?" Coulson begins but stops, as both of them take stock of each other after a while. Coulson is not sure what Ward sees per se, but the man _he_ sees is different from the ex-agent he encountered a while ago – this Ward looks older, more drawn, in a somewhat worse physical and mental shape, and there is some sort of an odd expression in his gaze, something that looks oddly familiar.

"I remembered it, from a long time ago," the younger man replies, and there it is again – that lack of mockery, of smugness, of confidence in his voice, as well as the open lack of taunting in his speech. He had seen Coulson's missing arm, but had not treated it as a new weakness either; in fact, he almost appears it to ignore it. This is new; the old Ward would have gone for such an obvious weakness right away, right?

"Anyways, sir, can I please talk to agent Morse?" Ward speaks up again, still subdued. "I want to apologize to her."

"No apologizing is going to change what you've done to her and to the others," Coulson snaps, but he already is curious: never before did the younger man offer to apologize to anyone... well actually he did. On a plane, on their last joint mission against Hydra, and that didn't go over well – not just because the others had no intention of believing him, not anymore, but also because it was all a part of a long plot to kidnap Morse – which worked, albeit to a point.

And yet - Coulson surreptitiously looks down: the light is on; Skye is tracking the signal, so perhaps it can be safe to indulge his curiosity somewhat –

"I know, sir," Ward does not back down. "But a man has to do what a man has to do, no matter what, and right now that is apologizing to agent Morse, so if you could?"

"Ah, let him," Morse says gruffly as she walks into the room, followed by Hunter (the two of them are on again, so some good did come out of the kidnapping after all), and Fitz too sidles into the room – really, he shouldn't be here at all, but his brooding over Jemma isn't healthy, so Skye and Coulson persuaded him to come and see Bobbi Morse off, even though the small scientist is just not that close with Morse, and his relationship with Hunter isn't all that good either – Coulson heard that after Hunter made some stupid joke about the 0-8-4, Ward and Jemma, Fitz had slugged him, actually – the first time he had slugged anyone, actually, and since Hunter is a fellow agent, Coulson should really have a talk with the two men – better to nip whatever misunderstandings they may have in the bud.

"So, what do you want to tell me, monster?" Bobbi, meanwhile, stares at Ward who is still online. "To apologize?"

"I do," Ward's voice remains steady. "What you did to Kara Lynn, your friend, was wrong. However, what I did, what I got Kara Lynn into, was also wrong. Two wrongs do not make a right. Pity that I never understood it until she died."

"Yes, well, part of it is her fault too," Bobbi mutters, looking half-surprised at what she is actually saying. "She should've known better than to mix in with you-"

"There, again, I have to agree with you," Ward interrupts her. "Mind you, Kara Lynn was the first person who actually believed in me, who trust me and thought I was a man, not a monster – and I let her down." He chuckles, joylessly. "Agent Coulson knew what he was doing when he offered me and her T.A.H.I.T.I. – maybe then the two of us would've been happy. But I was overconfident in myself – and what did happen happened."

"Is there a point to your self-depreciation?" Skye's voice, mocking, comes through the door into the office. "Because this crap sounds like the same Ward that we learned about after May broke your larynx."

"My point?" Ward nods, (but there is not any reaction to Skye's voice – and Coulson finds it curious, for the two of them have a history together – a bad one). "My point is several actually." He begins to tick off his fingers for that. "Firstly, I wanted to apologize to agent Morse. I did that. Secondly, I wanted to thank her for revealing to me the truth of who, or what, I actually am – I really needed that wake-up kick in the balls."

"I'd gladly do that again," Bobbi mutters, but there is an odd little note in her voice. "Do go on."

"Thirdly, I promise that I will change and become a man," Ward ticks off the third finger. "Maybe not the man S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted me to be, or you, or others, but – a man. Not a monster. And that brings me to my fourth point – a request, a suggestion, take your pick: Bobbi Morse, get help, before you end up even more like me."

"...You should've quit when you were ahead," and there is an odd note in her voice again. "I am nothing like you-"

"You misunderstand me," Ward is not backing down, and there is an odd note in his voice too, now. "We aren't _identical_ – you got boobs and I don't, for example. But the truth is, sadly, that we are not that different from each other, either? Remember that morning, agent Morse? You cracked through me like an egg. But you know what? That went both ways. I told you that you were like me and you _exploded_. You told me that I was a coward and I _exploded_."

"You're delusional," Bobbi does not back down. "You think that you're the first Hydra madman to mess with my head?"

"That brings me to Jemma Simmons, actually," Ward types several commands on his end of the discussion. "Fitz, what has happened to her? You look very bad, so I guess that it's worse?"

"An alien artefact – another 0-8-4 – ate her," Fitz says in a listless voice. "Not that you should care."

"Right. Skye, I know that you are around, can you do something? I sent a file on an e-mail as an attachment; can you check and see it if I did correctly? I don't think that there are any Hydra-viruses on it either, but you're the computer specialist here."

"There aren't," Skye's voice comes in through the open door. "It's a video file called Bobbi Morse. I think-"

"Skye," Fitz says once more. "If it's about Jemma, no matter how crude, I still have to see it."

"Very well," Skye is clearly reluctant to open the file, but she does – it goes into a separate window on Coulson's screen, and it is not crude – it is Hydra.

With Jemma being the victim. She walks into Whitehall's office, clearly nervous and wary. Whitehall is being his old self – casually cruel and mocking. Bakshi, alongside Morse, overpower Simmons, who is not just out of her depth, but also surprised, and strap her into a Faustian device – but instead of being brainwashed, Jemma just goes blank.

Whitehall, who until then was content to let Bakshi and Morse to handle Jemma, barks a new order – a brief one but well-understood, for Bakshi and Morse wheel-in a long table containing several surgical instruments and several containers that hold organs and body parts that don't look human, but rather Inhuman or even alien – and Whitehall begins to install them into Jemma, undergoing operations with minimal anaesthetic for the Faustian device keeps both Jemma's mind blank and her body secure.

...And as he does his work, Whitehall explains in his usual manner that Jemma is going to be his best creation up to date; a key, of some sort-

"Now I am _not_ judging you," Ward speaks up – contrary to his usual behavior, he did not slink away while everyone else was distracted. "You did what you did – to make S.H.I.E.L.D. better, to keep your cover, to remain the only key agent in Hydra, to survive – the reasons are yours and yours alone. I understand that. But I still suggest that you get therapy – this sort of field experience tears down your humanity, and before you know it, you are not a human, but something else, wrapped in human skin. A Rakshasa, maybe. Do not let this be your fate. You helped me see the truth about who I am – now let me please return the favor." And he finally logged off, leaving behind several hurt (emotionally hurt) agents; Morse's face, in particular, appeared to be carved from stone, so rigid and pale it was.

"Well," Coulson for once found himself lost for words as the final scenes of Bakshi's video came to an end. "Agent Morse-"

"You!" Fitz interrupts the older man, but this is a special occasion, is it not? "You!" he continues talking to Bobbi Morse. "You knew what that insane asshole had done to Jemma and you said nothing! You just let her walk around our base while all of that crap festered her body and mind!"

"Her mind had been preserved intact!" Bobbi glares back. "And I kept an eye on her, so she never did anything, never set off anything, until she was on _your_ watch! So don't blame me if your girlfriend proved too much for you to handle!"

"You and Hunter are all alike," Fitz growls. "The first thing that he said after we learned of Jemma's fate was to suggest that we move the 0-8-4 to Ward's cell. Ha-ha, this is not even crude – it is stupid, so stupid that it is not even funny! And you, you just let it happen and said nothing!"

"I did not," Bobbi is standing my ground. "I did my duty, I told my handler-"

"Lies," Coulson said quietly, but Bobbi stops at once. "You never told me any of this-"

"I wasn't talking about _you_ , sir," Bobbi shakes her head. "But about agent Gonzales-"

"Of course," Fitz nods in understanding. "We weren't friends back then, so you were keeping this information to yourself – to yourselves, and damn all the rest!"

"I had the situation under control," Bobbi grounds, "and when I tried to make friends with Simmons once more, she knocked me out – just when I was trying to protect her and ensure that she didn't get caught in the blast, just as Mack made sure that you weren't-"

"A blast that you caused in the first place!"

"It was a necessity! When you are in S.H.I.E.L.D. you have to do what you must do! You are serving a greater cause! If you can't handle it – get out."

"Personal attachments just get in the way, don't they?" Lance said quietly.

"Personal attachments are fine, as long one remembers their priorities," Bobbi whirled onto him. "When I tried to seduce you to our side of S.H.I.E.L.D. you kept your priorities straight – I was so proud of you! You are finally becoming the man that you can be! That's why I had to take the bullets for you – I was compromised, I was defeated, I couldn't have your blood on my hands as well-"

"That's enough," Melinda May interrupted the younger blonde, startling everyone. "I hate to interrupt this, but we're going to put agent Morse into a Vault for now, until we can figure out what to do next."

"You're unusually talkative this evening," Coulson said quietly. "Welcome back."

May gave her fellow agent one of her enigmatic looks. "Don't start, Phil," she said quietly. "We need to put Morse into a Vault – due to Skye's accidental meddling, this little interaction, starting with Ward's visit to us, is public knowledge, and by public – I mean S.H.I.E.L.D. Quite a few people want to talk to agent Morse about this-"

"Excuse me," Bobbi Morse said quickly, as she walked over to a window and opened it. "I got a better idea." And she jumped. Others, led by Lance and May, were there in a flash, but it was too late – Bobbi was gone, only ripples were floating outwards on the water.

"Bobbi could always swim," Lance twitched. "Mockingbird – flew like a bird and swam like a fish. She'll resurface."

"Yes, some distance away, I reckon," Melinda nodded and turned to Coulson. "Phil, we need to talk."

 _End_


End file.
